Explaining Their Thinking
Overview
When students explain their thinking process aloud, they recognize the strategies they use and solidify their understanding. Think-alouds, or self-explanations, require students to reflect on the details of text, the strategies needed to understand or write it, and the reasons behind those decisions. They can also be used as formative assessment to monitor students' understanding and address any misconceptions. Research cautions that this strategy is most effective when students are prompted with specific protocols or questions, and that prompts should be carefully aligned with target learning outcomes so students avoid reinforcing incorrect approaches or choices.
Example: Use This Strategy In in the Classroom
Design It into Your Product
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Active Learning Strategies
Physically acting out a text enhances reading comprehension.
Expressing ideas through visuals and audio, and understanding others' ideas in these forms, is as critical in today's world as traditional reading and writing.
Students activate more cognitive processes by exploring and representing their understandings in visual form.
Visiting places connected to classroom learning provides opportunities to deepen understanding through firsthand experiences.
Games help students visualize how to connect one fact to another.
Playful activities can support the development of learners' Metacognition and also inspire their narratives and writing.
Project-based learning (PBL) actively engages learners in authentic tasks designed to create products that answer a given question or solve a problem.
Response devices boost engagement by encouraging all students to answer every question.
